Tuesday, June 16, 2015

​A Trip To Boston

I spent the last couple of days in Boston, one of my favorite cities in the good ole United States of America. I've been quite a few times before, but this time around I went for work rather than pleasure. As long as I've worked for my current employer, I've never traveled for my job; so, this was an unexpected surprise. Since the week ahead is jam packed for work, I had to fly out on Sunday so that I could be back in town for a big meeting and audit on Wednesday.

My flight was scheduled to leave Huntsville a little after 11:00 a.m. on Sunday and so, I got up at 5:00 a.m., did a bit of laundry ​and then went to the 6:00 a.m. worship service at church where I'm pretty sure I was the only visitor that day. I was completely surprised when most of the people there were talking amongst themselves and you could tell they were regulars at the early service. I had no idea the 6:00 a.m. service had regulars. After church I went home and finished up some cleaning and changing of the sheets and actually packed a bag for my trip.
I left for the airport around 10:00 a.m., parked in long term parking, grabbed a bite to eat, ate, and got on the plane. A co-worker, Andy, went on the trip as well, but we were not sitting beside each other on the flight. We were a few rows apart. I sat between two men who I assume were also both headed out of town on business. One was going to Baltimore, the other was just grumpy. We had pretty much no layover in Atlanta, which was great. I had time to buy a bottle of water and get on the plane. On the flight from Atlanta to Boston, I had an exit row seat and there wasn't a seat in front of me so my legs were able to stretch out the whole flight and it was absolutely delightful! I watched a movie I had downloaded to my Kindle and just generally enjoyed the whole flight. I have exit row seats on the return flights home too, or at least I'm supposed to; so, I'm pretty pumped about that.

When we arrived in Boston, it was a little after 4:00 p.m. and we took the bus to the rental car location. Poor Andy, he's so young and innocent. The rental car was in his name because he s staying a day longer than I. He said he couldn't find on his reservation who the rental was with, but that he thought it was Hertz. So, into the Hertz line we go. Andy, bless him, keeps looking at his reservation and doesn't understand why he can't find which company the car is with. I ask to see it and it says Budget and I point that out and say we need to be in another (longer) line on the other end of the room. He thought that Budget meant that it was a budget, or cheap, car, not that it was the name of the company. He's young, people, he's young.

We went to dinner at Legal Sea Foods and had a great spread of delicious seafood items, including Lobster Bisque and stuffed shrimp. My only request was that we be back at the hotel by 9:00 p.m. which is when the season finale of Game of Thrones was coming on. We made it back with about 10 minutes to spare and would have gotten back sooner if not for the terrible waitress we had. She hardly ever checked on our table, we were often without drinks, and it took her three tries to get our checks split up correctly. If you ever go to the Legal Sea Foods in Braintree, be sure that Amanda is not your server.

I watched the Game of Thrones finale and then attempted to go to sleep. I did not sleep well at all - for the second night in a row. It was either the ginormous bed, the lack of Pippa, the fact I was distraught over the Game of Thrones finale or a combination of the three. Who knows? Whatever the case, it made for a very tired Monday which is when the actual work portion of the trip began.

We finally made it to the rental car around 6:00 p.m. and headed out on the road. At first Andy told me he wanted me to drive, but then decided to drive himself. I think he was a little nervous, but he did great. He wasn't as aggressive as I would have been, but he still did a good job. We made it to the hotel and got checked in, dropped our things off in our respective rooms and then left to get some dinner.